The Rainy Season
by milkmoth
Summary: She's half tried. He's half here. EclairxTamaki


* * *

a/n: This was done for hcflashfic on LJ, but I decided to post it here, because I was very happy with how it turned out. It's EclairxTamaki, with _almost _an AR-ish feel, even though it takes an AU 'what if?' approach to episode 26. What if Tamaki had agreed to go to France with Eclair?

Much thanks to **gem2niki** on LJ for the beta read.

* * *

The city of lights is dim tonight, and a thunderstorm (_C'est l'éclair et tonnerre, ce soir) _drum, drum, drums.

The lights shine runny into the wet, dark streets. Slosh of cars, dim city chatter; these are the sounds that drown through the rain's drum.

One light in one window of one apartment; here is where our story beings.

She holds a teacup steady in one hand, and his heart in the other.

Her smile is made of shiny, polished bones.

"Tamaki, would you like another cake?"

"No, thank you."

Her smile, already tentative, falters. A rare moment of awkwardness, a tumble off the balance beam.

"But, you can more than afford to eat it." Calories, control. He's free of these hindrances.

"I'm simply not hungry. Thank you, though. _Merci, merci._" And he smiles back, a broken gentleman's smile.

Her eyes wander down to the pastries. The candied cherries and apples glitter in the light, almost as brilliant as the crystal in the chandelier above them. The fruits in the pastries look tempting, sweet, like they've been carved from glass and finely dusted with sugar-snow.

She doesn't touch them, he won't touch them, and neither of them will eat.

A death-waking rumble fills the still, and the chandelier ripples and _cling-ling_s lightly, Still, neither moves. Her eyes stay fixed on him and his do not waver from a non-existent crumb on the floor.

It is his first night in Paris, and already there seems to be no light.

* * *

In her room, she sits in front of her vanity and brushes through her hair.

_Vanity, vanity, _each brush whispers.

In the next room over, she can't hear him at all, and almost wonders at the lack of crying. But not quite, because she is righteously firm in her belief that he _chose _to be here, and that she is there for him at any rate.

Later, lying in darkness, a flash of lightning throws itself over the room, and she catches her own eyes in the mirror.

She can hear him, now.

She shouldn't lie to herself so pitifully.

It goes on for five minutes more, and then she can't stand it anymore. She gets out of bed, clicks on her light, and slips her robe over her nightgown. She doesn't even bother to put on her slippers and her bony bare feet touch the cold ground as they patter – with the quickness of worry – down the hall.

One, the bathroom. Two, the parlor. Three – she hesitates over the darkened knob, hears another gulp of air, and opens the door without another second of hesitation.

"Do you want to go and see your mother?"

She tries to keep her voice cool and regal.

He hesitantly turns on _his _bedside light and pathetically looks up at her, a weak, play-pretend smile on his face. A smile that was there even before she came in.

She looks away. Tears are destructive, and she doesn't want to see them on his face.

"My mother?" he finally asks, and she's grateful there're no tears in his voice. His voice relaxes her, helps to calm her down and look at him again.

Her feet are cold.

"Yes. She's the reason you came here, no?"

He blinks at her.

"Now?"

Now being midnight.

"Yes," she says firmly, as if it were the most natural action.

"No, thank you," he replies promptly, softly, firmly. He turns off his light. She stands in the doorway where the hall light falls in, and wonders why he's so pointedly denying his very reason for coming here.

Her voice, without her consent, rises, quickens; "_Then why did you come here?_"

_It couldn't be for me_, a voice whispers from inside, a voice that is small and weak and desperately clingy (_and not what she wants to be_), as though the voice wants to add, _is it? Is it…?_

It takes a long time. Her feet get very cold waiting for his answer.

"I don't know," he finally says, a fragile and honest response from the muffle of his pillow.

She closes the door. The light disappears from his room and he is left to himself (which is obviously what he wants).

Leaning against his doorway, she nearly puts her face in her hands and wonders if what she's done is some foolish, flighty, _girlish_ decision.

She stands and stares at the wall. Ice eyes, lightning that is cold.

She wants to be a queen, but instead she just feels like everything is far, far out of her control.

Was never in her control to begin with.

* * *

_True love is not something easily ignored._

_A greedy love is even less easily appeased. _

* * *

It was the only time.

He never cried again.

She would have made sure of that. She showered him with everything he could want, filled the time between his arrival and his enrollment with excursions. Carriage rides, four-star restaurants visits to Paris monuments he'd surely been to many times before.

He did not want to visit his mother.

She realized the reason for this new creature before her. She knew right away. She knew all too well.

He stood with a slump- an elegant slump-but nonetheless a posture which exuded a dignified resignation. Something in his manners was cracked, like a doll whose joints had been bent out of place. A boy doll. One of those troubled artist-geniuses who has become depressed with the indelicacies of the world.

Éclair half-fancied that explanation, and took a liking to watching him play piano in that state. It was the most passionate she saw him, and although it was a suffocating, morbid passion, it was a passion nonetheless.

The rest of the time he was dead, deaf, and mute, and she could not deal with it at all.

She was irritated, frustrated, _exasperated. _What more did he want? He had all the riches in the world. He had everything he could desire, even more so than in Japan. He had his mother…

(He had _her_.)

_He doesn't want you, _the voice reminds her.

It is not the first time Éclair has felt so small, but it is the first that she felt so powerless.

_He is stronger than that. _

* * *

"Why don't you want her?"

It is during intermission. It is over her own clapping, the muffled, polite clap of long-gloved hands.

_Madama Butterfly._

When the clapping dies down, she repeats her question:

"Why won't you see your mother?"

He doesn't answer.

She purses her lips, tired of saying 'please' between the lines.

Her grip tightens on her opera glasses.

"_Why?_"

He looks down vaguely at what she's holding, gives a dizzy, not-quite-there smile.

"Why do you still have those?"

She looks down absently at the glasses.

"I threw the others away," she replies breezily, haughtily, not appreciating the change in topic. "You know that."

They'd sunk in the water and dropped to the bottom, and even if she wanted she could never have them back. Fantasies were fantasies, after all.

Now she wanted them back, even though she had no hope of having them.

"They're _new," _she explains with a sigh, "_New. _I have to have a pair, don't I? For the opera?"

She raises them to her eyes and smiles at him slightly, in a way that would bewitch – trap and captivate – any other man. Here it is an almost playful, familiar gesture.

He frowns a little, and her heart beats quicker at the display of not-so-melancholy annoyance.

"I can't decide what I want," he answers with a note of finality, and she assumes it's the answer to her question.

Later, after the light of the show has blurred and dimmed from short-term memory, they enjoy an agonizingly quiet (more than usual) drive home, through the lit-up dark, through the jammed streets of Paris.

"Mademoiselle Tonnerre, we're not at the opera now. You don't need to use them."

She frowns at her reflection (what she can see of it) in the dark glass, but doesn't remove them from her eyes.

She can hide, but she can't run.

* * *

It is one cold night that she goes into his room, but this time she gets very, very close; almost to the point where she is conscious of the small gap between them.

"Tamaki?" she breathes, whispers, and with a mumble his eyelids flicker open.

His eyes, devoid of blue without light, widen.

"What-?"

She draws back.

She doesn't say a word, but her body language says, haughtily, that _it's nothing. _

He had spoken mildly about a girl who feared thunder and lightning. She can tell he doesn't think of her quite so mildly. Éclair's jealous. She knows she's jealous.

She doesn't think he'll understand that she is afraid of the cold.

It's one of their normal afternoons in the parlor. She's home from school, still wearing the tartan skirt, the soft peter-pan collared shirt, and the black neck ribbon of her prestigious all-girls school. The uniform that she still manages to make look like _haute couture_, because everything Éclair touches is.

They always have tea. It's almost like, though both of them were raised French, they don't even share the ritualistic afternoon snack. But perhaps that's because they're no longer children.

When it's not raining (and it's not, today; a welcome taste of sunshine in the rainy season) Éclair's parlor is a deceptively airy, bright place. When the light hits her chandelier just right, it lights the whole room up with prism-beams of sharp white.

The teacups are delicate, as always, and there is quiet, as always, as she sips her tea.

And he had grown accustomed to having polite, flattering conversation with her. His act was toned down, from ravishing prince to lonely, polite prince. She liked him better this way, the way he always acted with her, compared to the blunt charmer he swooned other ladies with. This was fine with her. The only thing missing was the light in his eyes, and while it still nagged (_nibbled, roared, bit) _at her, she had grown accustomed to it.

They played games. When he spoke French, a little of his French wit slipped back in. She had the impression, at times, that he was a bit of a hapless fool.

But that was when he spoke Japanese. When he spoke French, a bit of his childhood instinct slipped back in, and it became apparent that although he (most likely) was still a hapless fool, he had an admirably quick mind.

(He made for a good game of conversation.)

Even in French, he was never sharp; would never criticize anyone. Especially not women. He was quick to defend women. (_"She dresses like a slob." "Oh, but she has a lovely figure.")_

Fool or no, Tamaki was intelligent. And most of all, charming.

"Tea, Mademoiselle?"

"Thank you, Tamaki. You're so kind." (_Vous etez __si__ gentil. Vous. Vous.)_

She raises her opera glasses to her eyes and smiles, kindly, because this is all a game and she wears a mask for play.

Besides of which, pleasantries and formalities go best with tea.

* * *

It's raining again today.

A light drizzle, a gray sky. Warm air. The humidity makes her hair limp, limper than it already is. It's frustrating her, and he can see the marks where her mascara ran after she threw a mini-tantrum in her room over the weather, only it's really about him.

They're pretty well covered up, though, by makeup. She's a master of illusion, although he doesn't realize this; she's experienced with concealer and shadow and rose-colored gloss.

They're in the parlor again today. Like every day. It seems like Éclair's apartment has become his prison.

(It reminds him of that Greek epic he read last year in class. The goddess kidnapping the hero. The memory is foggy, but he remembers Kyouya's admiration for the hero's cleverness, his own admiration for the hero's heroism And, even more faintly, he remembers trivial things: Ayame-san laboring through the more-accurate English translation, a number of blushing girls with clear, crystal-clear faces approaching him for help.)

Éclair would love to hear that he had just compared her to a goddess, even if in the most negative way possible. But he's tired, tired of bombastic compliments and deliciously hot air. He just doesn't _want _to anymore.

And so instead he settles for, "Your hair looks lovely today, Mademoiselle Éclair."

She sniffs, her temper too short to politely reply.

"I mean it," he insists. Although he doesn't.

"I look like a _wreck_," she moans, then her jaw sets hard.

"Tea?"

"Speak Japanese to me."

He blinks at her, the teapot in his hands poised to fill her cup. "Are you alright?"

Her lips purse a bit above that set jaw. "You're still speaking French."

"Don't be silly," he said, maintaining the pleasantries. And then, a surprising truth slipped out of his lips. "I like to speak French to you."

She stared at him while he quietly poured her tea. The controlled glug-swish, the exchange from teapot to teacup, was the only sound. Her blue eyes were just a little bit more open than they should have been, and her jaw had lost its resolve.

"I missed it so very much while I was in Japan," he says. And she notices faintly, just faintly, a light coming into his eyes and a smile tugging at his lips, and he isn't even _touching _her but he is touching her all the same. "I loved Japanese, of course; _passionately, _but my there is nothing that compares to the most beloved tongue, the tongue of my heart's land…"

She laughs.

It's more tentative and terse than the laugh he's used to, not as rich or heartfelt and childish, but it had been so long since he had heard anyone laugh at all that he actually felt himself smiling along.

* * *

She doesn't laugh very often, but the knowledge that _does - _that she is capable of it -seems to give Tamaki a thread of hope.

--

The rainy season ends soon enough, and it's summer now. A summer of warmer cool days and, no surprise, the weatherman is saying it's the rainiest summer in fifty years.

She sits barefoot, in a nightdress (not even fancy enough to be called a nightgown), watching a television that was haphazardly and oddly placed at the edge of the dining room table.

"Why did you put this here?"

"I've always wanted to watch television while I ate my breakfast," he says, in such an elegant way that she can't grumble anymore. About the television, anyway.

With her spoon (pure silver) she points disdainfully down into the bowl of soggy boxed cereal. "Why am I eating this?"

She looks up, and is met with a smile brighter than sunshine. (Being kept busy with his bizarre modification of her household has cheered him considerably. He has even won over the maids.)

"I've always wanted to dine on proper commoner cereal."

She takes another bite of the cardboard-flavored food. She won't admit it, but it's actually kind of good. She kind of likes it.

* * *

She's grown very fond of her umbrella (Coach, less _haute couture_ than usual but playful and girlish and interestingly unsuited to her character). It was red and pretty and bright, and it gave her a spark of hope for this cool, cloudy summer.

Tamaki had said that he liked it, as well.

Her steps are assured, graceful as usual. But there's a spring in them. She feels – oddly – good. A little bit nervous, but good. She's just any other French girl, she figured (although an especially well-dressed one, she thinks pleasantly), walking along the street through the crowd.

She's going to see him.

She walked in and gave a slight smile. Tamaki's mother was much like Tamaki himself. Anne-Sophie probably didn't know, for all of Éclair's distantness, but Éclair cared for her as much as she cared for her mother. More. And at the same time, she was jealous. Éclair had come to the conclusion that she was a very jealous creature. But she was jealous, because only Anne-Sophie had managed to fix Tamaki.

She walked in without knocking. Anne-Sophie left the door open for her.

"Oh, Éclair, is that you? Good to see you! Come in, come in!" Anne-Sophie smiled. She was as blindingly bright as her son.

The only one who was uncomfortable in this situation was Éclair.

Tamaki, sitting at the kitchen table in the other room, waves brightly. Very brightly. A grand gesture, accompanied by a not-very-subtle whisper of, "Good afternoon_, _Mademoiselle Éclair!"

"Are you ready for your piano lesson?"

Anne-Sophie smiles. Kind, warm. Éclair is reminded of Tamaki and love.

"Yes, thank you."

She sits down at the piano bench. She runs her fingers over the keys. It's a pretty piano. Probably the prettiest thing inside this shack. Cottage. Probably brought over from the man where Anne-Sophie used to live.

Tamaki sits down next to her. "Mama told me she was taught you for a couple years before you came to visit me," he says, a little smile in his voice as he absently plays out a few notes.

She doesn't respond. She stares at the keys, at his fingers on the keys, instead. She doesn't want to have this conversation. It's too sentimental for her tastes. She's too proud to admit that she was swept away and ruled by a fairytale.

He takes her hands, guides them to their starting positions on the piano. Gently. He has very soft hands, but she knew that already. For the first time in her life, she finds her face heating up, and she glances at his only to find a gentle, soft smile there.

"She says you're good."

"You're better," she says, offhandedly. But, really, her lips have moved without her consent.

He smiles, deliberately modest.

"Do you want me to teach you today?"

He's so good with girls. She wonders if she will ever be the one he cares about most, and not just another girl to please.

* * *

The Japanese school year will commence soon.

Éclair is feeling jumpy, irritable, a nervous itch.

Finally she pops the question:

"Do you want to go back to Japan?"

He stares at her. He almost drops his teacup. His eyes go wide. His jaw drops inelegantly. He's not very elegant sometimes. Sometimes, his foolishness is a good thing.

"I… But… My mother…"

She feels a pang. Raw, green envy.

"We'd still be engaged. You could still see her, regardless of that fact. Which brings me to another point." She purses her lips so hard they go white. Her voice comes out unnaturally smooth. "Do you want to cancel our engagement?"

He stares down into his teacup.

He smiles, sunshine, but doesn't meet her eyes.

"I've made my decision. Éclair, thank you for allowing me to see my mother. I will follow through with what I have committed to. For my mother. For my family."

Her heart leaps.

She feels guilt.

She feels disappointment creep in.

_Not for me. _

"Your friends are there," she says, in a voice polite and distant. _The third son, those twins, the man, the boy, the girl… The people you know and love and trust. The life you have always known._

_Go._

"But-"

"I already told you. It's my decision. You may see her regardless, any time you please." She takes a calm sip of tea, eyes closed. Apparently in dismissal. In truth, to guard against his response.

_She's_ _there. I am here. It's logical. Go._

"I like it here."

She stares at him. He stares back.

"But would you be happier in Japan?"

There's a long, long silence.

She knows the answer.

_Yes. Yes. Now go. _

"Will you come with me?"

She's shocked.

So shocked.

Shocked enough that she sets her teacup down with a wobbling clink and picks up her glasses, twists them deftly and nervously, nervously around in her fingers.

(Her heart beats faster, faster.)

(She doesn't care if he's just being polite, chivalrous, fulfilling his duty as her fiancé. She doesn't care.)

"I mean-" his voice goes fast, rapid-quick with anticipation and the need to explain "-there's Kyoto, which, _unbelievably,_ _isn't _Japan's Disneyland or Wonderland or any kind of exotic land, but it's a spectacular place to go for a historical, intellectual vacation. And there are kotatsu - you haven't experienced a kotatsu yet, you really must, they're incredible; I haven't seen anything as marvelous in all of Europe. They're wonderful, very warm -"

"Fine. Yes."

_I'll come, I'll come. I'll be with you._

She's surprised, because she can't remember the last time she was this girlishly excited for something. (There are flutters in her stomach, her breath is gone out of her lungs, and she stands up, but she feels weak-kneed.) Oh, but, she can: the last time she went to Japan. The firsttime she met him.

He looks ready to throw his arms around her, and maybe with another year to thaw out - maybe another year together – maybe then he actually _will. _

Maybe, someday, _maybe_ he can love her.

* * *

When she packs, she decides to leave her opera glasses behind. When she comes back, she will only carry them to the opera.


End file.
